Announcing Effective Altruism Grants

I’m an­nounc­ing a new pro­ject from the Cen­tre for Effec­tive Altru­ism: Effec­tive Altru­ism Grants. Effec­tive Altru­ism Grants aims to provide grants of up to £100,000 (~$130,000) to help in­di­vi­d­u­als work on promis­ing pro­jects.

We hope to fund a wide range of effec­tive pro­jects that will di­rectly or in­di­rectly con­tribute to mak­ing the world a bet­ter place. We pri­mar­ily ex­pect to fund in­di­vi­d­u­als who ex­plic­itly en­dorse the prin­ci­ples of effec­tive al­tru­ism, broadly con­strued, but are in prin­ci­ple open to fund­ing pro­jects of any form.

This pro­ject is be­ing run by the Cen­tre for Effec­tive Altru­ism. In­di­vi­d­ual ap­pli­cants may re­ceive up to £100,000 (~$130,000). CEA will cap our to­tal fund­ing for the Effec­tive Altru­ism Grants in 2017 at £500,000 (~$650,000), but will pre­sent promis­ing ap­pli­ca­tions that we have not cho­sen to fund to other sig­nifi­cant donors. Th­ese in­clude the Effec­tive Altru­ism Com­mu­nity Fund. This means that the to­tal pool of available fund­ing may be sig­nifi­cantly higher.

We are run­ning this pro­ject as a way to sup­port the effec­tive al­tru­ism com­mu­nity and to al­low peo­ple to pur­sue use­ful pro­jects. The Cen­tre for Effec­tive Altru­ism will only fund pro­jects that fur­ther its char­i­ta­ble ob­jects.[1] How­ever, we also wel­come ap­pli­ca­tions that may be of in­ter­est to our part­ners who are also look­ing to fund promis­ing pro­jects.

Mo­ti­va­tion and aims

Effec­tive al­tru­ism has at­tracted many peo­ple of out­stand­ing tal­ent and mo­ti­va­tion. We be­lieve that pro­vid­ing those peo­ple with the re­sources that they need to re­al­ize their po­ten­tial could be a highly effec­tive use of re­sources.

Cur­rently, this fund­ing op­por­tu­nity is rel­a­tively ne­glected within the effec­tive al­tru­ism com­mu­nity. There are not many donors di­rectly fund­ing small pro­jects run by in­di­vi­d­u­als. For that rea­son we be­lieve that fund­ing the very best pro­jects af­ter a thor­ough ap­pli­ca­tion pro­cess could be a great use of funds. We want to try out a grants pro­ject dur­ing 2017. If we feel that we have been able to use money well through this pro­ject, we will al­lo­cate new funds to it in 2018.

We want to use the grants to in­crease the di­ver­sity of ap­proaches within effec­tive al­tru­ism. We be­lieve that untested strate­gies could yield sig­nifi­cant in­for­ma­tion value for the effec­tive al­tru­ism com­mu­nity, and will fund pro­jects ac­cord­ingly. We hope that the Effec­tive Altru­ism Grants will also al­low peo­ple from less priv­ileged back­grounds (and there­fore less fi­nan­cial sta­bil­ity) to pur­sue the high­est ex­pected value ca­reer paths open to them.

What pro­jects could get funded?

We wel­come ap­pli­ca­tions from in­di­vi­d­u­als of any back­ground and hope that ap­pli­cants will in­clude se­nior pro­fes­sion­als and aca­demics as well as re­cent grad­u­ates. Our hope is to fund a di­verse ar­ray of pro­jects, both in terms of causes and ap­proaches.

In terms of length and size, we are both look­ing to give large grants to longer pro­jects (up to £100,000, e.g., over more than a year), and smaller grants to shorter pro­jects, or parts of pro­jects (e.g., £10,000 (~$13,000) over a three-month pe­riod). The smaller grants could go to ap­pli­cants who wish to tran­si­tion into a more im­pact­ful ca­reer or who want to get started on a larger pro­ject. Grants of any size may be re­newed. If you have a pro­ject that would re­quire sig­nifi­cantly more than £100,000, we still en­courage you to ap­ply as we may be able to find you fund­ing from other sources.

Similarly, due to le­gal re­stric­tions, CEA may not be able to fund cer­tain types of pro­jects. How­ever, if the pro­ject seems promis­ing, we may, with your per­mis­sion, share your ap­pli­ca­tion with other in­di­vi­d­u­als who are look­ing to fund pro­jects in the effec­tive al­tru­ism move­ment.

We wel­come ap­pli­ca­tions in the fol­low­ing ar­eas:

Writ­ing a book or book proposal

Un­salaried fel­low­ships or in­tern­ships at think tanks or me­dia outlets

Public out­reach on effec­tive al­tru­ism or effec­tive al­tru­ism-re­lated top­ics (such as pri­ori­ti­za­tion or ra­tio­nal­ity)

Seed-fund­ing for an in­de­pen­dent pro­ject; e.g. found­ing a new charity

Some illus­tra­tive ex­am­ples:

Write a book pro­posal on tech­nolog­i­cal solu­tions to fac­tory farming

Take an un­paid in­tern­ship at a think-tank as a way of trans­fer­ring into a ca­reer in policy

Start a blog on some im­por­tant and un­der­stud­ied fu­ture technology

Pur­sue a PhD in eco­nomics on how to fac­tor vari­able-pop­u­la­tion ethics con­sid­er­a­tions into cost-benefit analysis

Run a lo­cal effec­tive al­tru­ist group, part-time or full-time

Take sev­eral months off work in or­der to vol­un­teer for effec­tive al­tru­ist or­gani­sa­tions and figure out your next ca­reer steps

How the grants work

The grants may be paid out by Au­gust 15th 2017 at the ear­liest.

The grant’s du­ra­tion can vary be­tween a month and sev­eral years. We ex­pect many of our grants to be short.

The grant max­i­mum is £100,000.

Grants can be re­newed.

The Cen­tre for Effec­tive Altru­ism will not act as your em­ployer. We will not be re­spon­si­ble for the grantees.

Fund­ing will be paid out on a quar­terly ba­sis, con­di­tional on item­ized re­ports on spend­ing in the last quar­ter, as well as spend­ing and ac­tivity plans for the com­ing quar­ter. How­ever, we are con­sciously tak­ing a ‘[hits-based giv­ing](http://​​www.open­philan­thropy.org/​​blog/​​hits-based-giv­ing)’ ap­proach and will not dis­con­tinue fund­ing merely be­cause ini­tial re­sults of the pro­ject were less promis­ing than was hoped.

We wel­come re­quests for fund­ing of ex­penses, such as tu­ition fees, travel, buy­ing grantees out of ex­ist­ing con­tracts etc, as well as liv­ing costs. You should provide us with an es­ti­mate of your liv­ing costs (sub­ject to re­vi­sion—rele­vant fac­tors in­clude se­nior­ity, lo­ca­tion, etc.) Note that we will likely re­fer ap­pli­ca­tions that re­quest fund­ing for liv­ing costs and over­heads to our part­ners, rather than fund­ing them our­selves.

Eval­u­a­tion criteria

Our eval­u­a­tion crite­ria are:

Un­der­stand­ing of, and com­mit­ment to, the prin­ci­ples of effec­tive al­tru­ism. We are look­ing pri­mar­ily for peo­ple who can show clear ev­i­dence that they want to benefit oth­ers as effec­tively as pos­si­ble.

De­mon­strated abil­ity and drive. We are look­ing to fund peo­ple who are both highly com­pe­tent and strongly mo­ti­vated. In par­tic­u­lar, it is im­por­tant that you are able to bring your plans to com­ple­tion.

Qual­ity of the pro­ject plan. We are look­ing to fund pro­jects which have high ex­pected value, ei­ther di­rectly, or through en­abling your­self or oth­ers to have an im­pact at a later point. We would pri­ori­tize a pro­ject which might fail over a safer bet if the former has higher ex­pected value. We also be­lieve that in­for­ma­tion for the com­mu­nity is an im­por­tant source of value. For that rea­son, we look favourably on pro­jects ex­plor­ing pre­vi­ously untested strate­gies.

Qual­ity of the ca­reer plan. We are also look­ing at the qual­ity of your over­all ca­reer plan, and how your pro­ject fits in with that plan. In par­tic­u­lar, we will be look­ing at how your pro­posal fits into your over­all ca­reer plan, be­cause this helps us to as­sess how com­mit­ted you are to your pro­posal as well as your un­der­stand­ing of Effec­tive Altru­ism. (This crite­rion may be weighted less heav­ily for se­nior ap­pli­cants.)

In ad­di­tion, any pro­ject funded by CEA must fur­ther CEA’s char­i­ta­ble ob­jects.

We are an equal op­por­tu­nity or­ga­ni­za­tion and value di­ver­sity. We do not dis­crim­i­nate on the ba­sis of re­li­gion, color, na­tional ori­gin, gen­der, sex­ual ori­en­ta­tion, age, mar­i­tal sta­tus, or dis­abil­ity sta­tus. Please con­tact us to dis­cuss ad­just­ments to the ap­pli­ca­tion pro­cess.

Ap­pli­ca­tion process

Ap­pli­ca­tions will be blinded to as­ses­sors. After an ini­tial screen­ing, the most promis­ing can­di­dates will be in­vited to in­ter­views in the week of 24th July. Th­ese can­di­dates will have three sep­a­rate short in­ter­views. Ap­pli­ca­tions for smaller grants will other things equal have a pro­por­tionately greater chance of suc­cess. Asses­sors will re­cuse them­selves if there is a con­flict of in­ter­est. We aim to make the fi­nal de­ci­sions by 1 Au­gust.

Any promis­ing pro­jects that do not fur­ther CEA’s ob­jects, as well as the most promis­ing re­jected ap­pli­ca­tions may, with per­mis­sion, be pre­sented to other sig­nifi­cant effec­tive al­tru­ist donors. Th­ese donors may at some as yet un­de­cided point in time choose to fund some of those ap­pli­cants.

* * *

[1]: Our char­i­ta­ble ob­jects are listed in the “Doc­u­ments” tab of this site.

Could you give ex­am­ples of the types of things you wouldn’t fund or are very un­likely to fund?
That avoids you get­ting lots of ap­pli­ca­tions you don’t want as well as peo­ple spend­ing time sub­mit­ting ap­pli­ca­tions that will get re­jected. For in­stance, would/​could CEA provide seed fund­ing for any for al­tru­is­tic for profit or­gani­sa­tions, like start-ups? Ask­ing for a friend...

We have set a tight dead­line in or­der to al­low us to pro­cess ap­pli­ca­tions be­fore the start of the aca­demic year, since we see fund­ing for study as one of the main use cases. If the pro­ject is suc­cess­ful, we will set more gen­er­ous dead­lines in the fu­ture.

CEA may not be able to fund for-profit or­gani­sa­tions, be­cause we have to use money to fur­ther our char­i­ta­ble ob­jects. How­ever, we en­courage ap­pli­ca­tions from for-prof­its. We may then, with the ap­pli­cant’s per­mis­sion, share in­for­ma­tion about the pro­jects with pri­vate donors who might provide fund­ing. In gen­eral, there aren’t classes of pro­jects that we won’t con­sider: we want to cast the net wide. How­ever, if oth­ers are un­sure, I recom­mend that they email ea­grants@cen­tre­fore­ffec­tivealtru­ism.org to clar­ify on a case-by-case ba­sis.

Would any­one be in­ter­ested in an EA pre­dic­tion mar­ket, where trad­ing prof­its were donated to the EA char­ity of the in­vestor’s choos­ing, and the con­tracts were based on out­comes im­por­tant to EAs (ex­am­ples be­low)?

Will a na­tion state launch a nu­clear weapon in 2017 that kills more than 1,000 peo­ple?

Will one of the cur­rent top five fast food chains offer an item con­tain­ing cul­tured meat be­fore 2023?

Will the to­tal num­ber of slaugh­tered farm an­i­mals in 2017 be less than that in 2016?

While I’m gen­er­ally in fa­vor of the idea of pre­dic­tion mar­kets, I think we need to con­sider the po­ten­tial nega­tive PR from bet­ting on catas­tro­phes. So while bet­ting on whether a fast food chain offers cul­tured meat be­fore a cer­tain date would prob­a­bly be fine, I think it would be a re­ally bad idea to bet on nu­clear weapons be­ing used.

For con­text (plau­si­bly Mac already knows this): At least in the U.S., real-money pre­dic­tion mar­kets are ap­par­ently le­gal so long as the prof­its from suc­cess­ful bets do not go to the bet­tors (e.g. be­cause they go to char­ity in­stead): see Bet2Give. As I un­der­stand it, Bet2Give didn’t be­come pop­u­lar enough to be sus­tain­able — per­haps be­cause not enough play­ers were mo­ti­vated to par­ti­ci­pate given that they couldn’t ac­tu­ally re­ceive mon­e­tary re­wards for suc­cess­ful bets.

Hop­ing to se­cure PhD study and have an EA-re­lated re­search pro­posal. I’ve no­ticed the ap­pli­ca­tion char­ac­ters limit is quite strict, so quite likely won’t be able to ex­plain much of the pro­posal in that. Should I at­tach it to my CV or should I just ex­plain it very very briefly in the ap­pli­ca­tion?

Have you already raised the funds for this? EA Ven­tures failed a while back pri­mar­ily be­cause there was not the money, and those in charge of it found that they had a much more difficult time rais­ing funds than they ex­pected.

I would be in­ter­ested in a write up of EA Ven­tures and why it did not seem to work (did it fail) and what can be learned from it. I think there is sig­nifi­cant value in learn­ing for the EA com­mu­nity in writ­ing up pro­jects like this even if they went wrong.

Similarly I would be in­ter­ested in see­ing the write up of the Pareto fel­low­ship—an­other pro­gram that pos­si­bly (it is un­clear) was not the suc­cess that was hoped for.

If it is the case (I hope it would be the case) that CEA has an in­ter­nal write-up of these pro­jects but not a pub­lish­able one I can try to find a trust­wor­thy Lon­don based vol­un­teer who could re-write it up for you. Or it might be a good pro­ject for a sum­mer in­tern.